October 17 2021 - Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch - Wheat and the Cross

 
Over a month ago already, we heard in the Gospel the Lord offered an invitation to anyone who wished to be his disciple. A stark invitation. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” To follow Jesus we must take up the cross. 

The cross is the common denominator for all modes of Christian life. Whether you are married, single, a priest, a consecrated religious, a widow, a teenager, a grandparent, or a stranger in a strange land, you are called to embrace the cross. All walks of Christian life take the shape of the cross.

If you are single, you are called to die to self-centeredness and live a life of love and obedience to God and service to others. If you are married, you are to sacrifice your life for your spouse and for your children. Priests are to pour out their lives in loving service to the Church through the duties entailed by their ordination: teaching, governing, sanctifying the Church. Consecrated religious carry the cross through their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and the particular works of their religious orders. 

In the Gospel, the Lord did not specifically mention the cross. But in teaching his disciples he did employ the image of the grain of wheat which is a veiled image for the cross. The grain of wheat that must fall to the ground and die is a symbol for the Christian life. The grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die, just like our Lord had to go to the cross to die on Good Friday, just like we his disciples must go to the cross and die, and in a sense live out Good Friday, every day.

We hear this Gospel passage on the fifth Sunday of Lent, the Sunday before Holy Week. During Lent this Gospel helps us to understand why the Lord must suffer and die. This Gospel passage is also used for the liturgies for the Ordination of Priests and for the profession of Vows for consecrated religious. Consider, as the priest lays down on the cold marble of the cathedral this image of the dying grain of wheat is presented to him. And also, as the religious novices kneel before the bishop or abbot and make those promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience, they hear the Lord telling them, that they must become a grain of wheat and die.

And yet, this image doesn’t just end in death, it contains a promise: if it dies, it will produce much fruit. Here is the complete image of the Paschal Mystery. Good Friday is not the end. The Lord’s death on the cross is not a victory for the powers of death, but for the goodness of heaven. Jesus dies on the cross and is buried in the tomb, in order to be raised by the Father on Easter, destroying death. He is lifted up from the earth, in order to draw everyone who believe in Him to God—to eternal life.

So too in the life of the Christian, when our life bears the shape of the cross, when we put pride and lust and disobedience and envy and selfishness to death, the grain of wheat produces much fruit. Good Friday is to be lived out every day, but so is Easter, and so is the Fruit Bearing Feast of Pentecost.

A single person, whose life is devoted to self-sacrificial service enriches the church with spiritual fruits. A married couple who loves each other with Christ-like sacrificial love, draws each other to God, they become blessings to each other, their children, the church, and the world. Priests, though celibate, become instruments of new life in the church. Religious by living out the evangelical counsels infuse the Church with learning and healing and compassion and joy.

Why is this Gospel passage proclaimed particularly on the Feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch? Listen to the words our patron, the holy bishop Ignatius wrote to the Romans as he was being marched to his death in the Roman Circus, “I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God… Permit me to imitate my suffering God…Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat.” This Gospel, this teaching of the Lord Jesus, echoed in the mind, and heart, and soul of this holy bishop. He willingly embraced becoming wheat, crushed in martyrdom, so that he may obtain the promises of the Lord. In willingly going to his martyrdom, Ignatius sought to imitate the suffering and death of Jesus. 

Now many Christians, most of us, are scared to death of death. Most of us run away from suffering. We seek to avoid any conversations or posturing or activity that might result in our martyrdoms. We hide our faith.

But not Ignatius. Ignatius demonstrates the freedom from fear that belongs to those who have grown mature in faith, hope, and love. Faith that Christ is God. Hope in His Promises. Love that impels us to Imitate Him even in suffering and death, that the Christian faith might be spread. 

And that’s a freedom—freedom from fear—the Lord wants for all of us because that’s a freedom we need to fulfill our Gospel mission. We need freedom from fear in order to stand up for our Catholic faith when it is being attacked in the public sphere and to teach that faith amidst so many cultural errors. We need freedom so that the sinful tendencies of our flesh do not control our lives. We need freedom from fear in order to bring the light of the Gospel into the dark places of the world.

“Do not have Jesus Christ on your lips, and the world in your hearts” St. Ignatius writes. On this feast of St. Ignatius our patron, we celebrate his witness, his faith, his freedom, his conviction, that those holy fruits may be produced in us for the glory of God and salvation of souls.